Robert Dale Owen

Robert Dale Owen was born on 7 November 1801, in Glasgow, Scotland, to Ann (or Anne) Caroline Dale and Robert Owen. His mother was the daughter of David Dale, a Scottish textile manufacturer; his Welsh-born father became part-owner and manager of the New Lanark Mills, his father-in-law's textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland.{{cite web | title =Robert Owen Timeline | publisher =Robert Owen Museum | date =2008 | url =http://robert-owen-museum.org.uk/time_line | access-date =29 August 2017 | archive-date =10 October 2018 | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20181010123944/http://robert-owen-museum.org.uk/time_line | url-status =dead }}{{cite book | editor=Linda C. Gugin and James E. St. Clair | title =Indiana's 200: The People Who Shaped the Hoosier State | publisher =Indiana Historical Society Press| year =2015 | location =Indianapolis | pages=269–70 | isbn =978-0-87195-387-2}} See also: {{cite journal| author=Arthur H. Estabrook | title =The Family History of Robert Owen | journal =Indiana Magazine of History | volume =19 | issue =1 | pages =63–64, 69, 72 | publisher =Indiana University | location =Bloomington | date =1923| url =https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/view/6280/6276| access-date =August 29, 2017}} See also: {{cite book | author=Frank Podmore | title =Robert Owen: A Biography | publisher =D. Appleton and Company | volume =I | year =1907 | location =New York | pages=2, 4 | url =https://books.google.com/books?id=E-sJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PR18}} Robert Dale was the eldest surviving son of eight children; his younger siblings (three brothers and three sister) were William, Ann (or Anne) Caroline, Jane Dale, David Dale, Richard Dale, and Mary.Estabrook, pages 72, 80, 83.

Owen grew up in Braxfield, Scotland, and was privately tutored before he was sent at the age of sixteen to Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg's school at Hofwyl, Switzerland. The Swiss school exposed Owen to Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi's method of education. After completing his formal education, Owen returned to Scotland to join his father in the textile business at New Lanark.Estabrook, page 72. See also: {{cite book | author=Robert Dale Owen| title =Threading My Way, Twenty-Seven Years of Autobiography | publisher =G. W. Carleton and Company; Trubner and Company | year = 1874 | location =New York; London | page=[https://archive.org/details/threadingmyway00unkngoog/page/n72 56] | url =https://archive.org/details/threadingmyway00unkngoog }}{{cite web| title=Owen, Robert Dale (1801–1877) |work=Biographical Directory of the United States Congress | publisher=U.S. Congress | url=https://bioguide.congress.gov/search/bio/O000152| access-date=April 14, 2024}}

Owen's father, a successful textile manufacturer and philanthropist, became a noted socialist reformer whose vision of social equality included, among other projects, the establishment of experimental utopian communities in the United States and the United Kingdom.Estabrook, page 68. Robert Dale Owen, who shared many of his father's views on social issues immigrated to the United States in 1825, became a U.S. citizen, and helped his father manage the socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana. Owen's three surviving brothers (William, David, and Richard) and his sister, Jane, also immigrated to the United States and became residents of New Harmony.Estabrook, pages 72–73.{{cite journal| author=Donald E. Pitzer| title =Why New Harmony is World Famous| journal =Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History | volume =26 | issue =2 | page=11| publisher =Indiana Historical Society | location =Indianapolis | date =Spring 2014}}

Between 1825 and 1828, Owen managed the day-to-day operations of the socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, while his father returned to Britain to resume his social reform and philanthropic work in Europe.Estabrook, page 72. In addition to his other work, Owen and Frances Wright, a wealthy, Scottish philanthropist and radical reformer, published articles in the New-Harmony Gazette, the town's liberal weekly newspaper, and served as its co-editors. Established in 1825, the Gazette was one of Indiana's earliest newspapers; however, it ceased publications in February 1829.Pitzer, "Why New Harmony is World Famous," page 13.Pancoast and Lincoln, page 11.

After the New Harmony utopian community dissolved in 1827, Owen traveled in Europe before returning to the United States in 1829. During this period Owen wrote Moral Physiology; or, A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question (1830), a controversial pamphlet on the topic of population control.Pancoast and Lincoln, page 145. It was one of the first books in the United States to advocate birth control, along with Dr. Charles Knowlton's Fruits of Philosophy.Pitzer, "Why New Harmony is World Famous," page 12.Pancoast and Lincoln, pages 19–20. Knowlton and Owen were contemporaries and apparently knew each other. Content from Knowlton's book appears in Owen's, and the second edition of Knowlton's book includes some of Owen's content.

Owen moved to New York City, where he and Wright co-edited the weekly Free Enquirer until 1831–32.{{cite journal| author=Allison Brown and Kisha Tandy | title =To Be Morally Just: Robert Dale Owen and Abolitionism | journal =Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History | volume =26 | issue =3 | pages=54–55 | publisher =Indiana Historical Society | location =Indianapolis | date =Summer 2014}}{{Cite NIE|wstitle=Owen, Robert Dale|year=1905}} As they had done in the New Harmony Gazette, the Free Enquirer continued to express their radical views on a variety of subjects, including abolition of slavery, women's rights, universal suffrage, free public education, birth control, and religion. Owen returned to New Harmony, Indiana, in 1833, after he and Wright discontinued their editorship of the New York newspaper.

Owen and Mary Jane Robinson were married before a justice of the peace on 12 April 1832, in New York City. After an extended trip to Europe, they relocated to New Harmony, Indiana. The couple had six children, two of whom died at an early age. Their surviving children were Florence (b. 1836), Julian Dale (b. 1837), Ernest (b. 1838), and Rosamond (b. 1843).Estabrook, pages 73–78.Pancoast and Lincoln, page 23.

On June 23, 1876, five years after the death of his first wife, Owen married Lottie Walton Kellogg at Caldwell, New York; he died a year later.

During 1829–30, Owen became an active leader in the Working Men's Party in New York City. In contrast to Democratic Presidents Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk, Owen was opposed to slavery, although his partisanship distanced him from other leading abolitionists of the era.{{cite book|author=Eric Lott |title=Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1993|location=New York|page=129|isbn=9780199717682}}

After Owen's return to New Harmony, Indiana in 1833, he became active in state politics. Owen served in the Indiana House of Representatives (1835–38; 1851–53). He distinguished himself as an influential member of the Indiana General Assembly during his first term by securing appropriations for the state's tax-supported public school system. In addition, Owen was instrumental in introducing legislation and argued in support of widows and married women's property rights, but the bill was defeated. He also proposed laws granting women greater freedom of divorce.

In addition to serving in the state legislature, Owen was elected as a delegate from Posey County, Indiana, to the Indiana Constitutional Convention in 1850.Estabrook, pages 72–74. At the convention, Owen initiated a proposal to include provisions for women's property rights in the state constitution. Although it was not approved, this early effort to protect women's rights led to later laws that were passed to secure women's property, divorce, and voting rights.Pancoast and Lincoln, page 22. One of Owen's lasting legacies was his authorship and efforts to secure the inclusion of an article in the Indiana Constitution of 1851 that provided state funding for a uniform system of common schools that are free and open to all and established the office of the state's superintendent of public instruction.Pancoast and Lincoln, pages 56–57.

After his first term in the Indiana legislature and two unsuccessful campaigns for election to the U.S. Congress in 1838 and in 1840, Owen was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1842. He served from 1843 to 1847 in the Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth Congresses. Owen was chairman of the Committee on Roads and Canals during the Twenty-eighth Congress. He was also involved in the debates about the annexation of Texas and an Oregon boundary dispute in 1844 that led to the establishment of the U.S-British boundary at the 49th parallel north, the result of the Oregon Treaty (1846).Pancoast and Lincoln, pages 40–41.

While serving as a member of Congress, Owen introduced and helped to secure passage of the bill that founded the Smithsonian Institution in 1846.{{cite book | author =Kenneth Hafertepe | title =America's Castle: The Evolution of the Smithsonian Building and Its Institution, 1840–1878 | publisher =Smithsonian Press | year =1984 | location =Washington, D.C. | pages =[https://archive.org/details/americascastleev0000hafe/page/15 15–17] | url =https://archive.org/details/americascastleev0000hafe/page/15 | isbn =0-87474-500-4}} Owen was appointed to the Smithsonian Institution's first Board of Regents and chaired its Building Committee, which oversaw the construction of the Smithsonian Institution Building in Washington, D.C., and recommended James Renwick Jr. as architect, James Dixson and Gilbert Cameron as the contractors, and the Seneca Quarry for its distinct, dark-red sandstone.Hafertepe, pages 17, 27, 37

File:Robertdaleowenindiana.jpg

Owen, his brother David Dale Owen, and architect Robert Mills, were involved in developing preliminary plans for the Smithsonian Building. These early plans influenced Renwick's choice of the Romanesque Revival architectural style (sometimes referred to as Norman-style architecture) and his three-story design for the building, which was finally selected, although not without controversy.Hafertepe, pages 47, 60–61. Owen's book Hints on Public Architecture (1849) argued the case for the suitability of Renwick's Romanesque Revival (Norman) architectural style for public buildings such as the Smithsonian "Castle," which he discussed in detail. Seven full-page illustrations and details of the building's architectural elements were prominently featured in the book, leading some to criticize Owen for his bias toward Renwick and his preference for Norman-style architecture over other popular styles.{{cite book |title=The Smithsonian Castle and the Seneca Quarry|author=Garrett Peck |year=2013 |publisher=The History Press |pages=43–53}}Hafertepe, pages 83–84.

Owen was defeated in his bid for re-election to Congress in 1846; however, he remained active in public service and was once again elected to serve in the Indiana General Assembly. On 24 May 1853, while Owen was serving as a state legislator in Indiana, President Franklin Pierce appointed him as U.S. minister (Chargé d'Affaires and Minister Resident) to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies at Naples.{{cite web|url=https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/owen-robert-dale |title=Robert Dale Owen|work=Department History |publisher=U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian|access-date=6 September 2017}} Owen served in the diplomatic post until 20 September 1858, and then retired from political life, although he remained actively interested in public affairs and social reform issues.

During the American Civil War, Owen served in the Ordnance Commission to supply the Union Army; on 16 March 1863, he was appointed to the Freedman's Inquiry Commission. The commission was a predecessor to the Freedmen's Bureau.Pancoast and Lincoln, page 91.

In 1862 Owen wrote a series of open letters to U.S. government officials, including President Abraham Lincoln and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, to encourage them to support general emancipation. Owen's letter of 23 July 1862, was published in the New York Evening Post on 8 August 1862, and his letter of 12 September 1862, was published in the same newspaper on 22 September 1862. In another open letter that Owen wrote to President Lincoln on 17 September 1862,{{cite web|title=Robert Dale Owen's Letter to President Lincoln | publisher=University of Evansville |url=http://faculty.evansville.edu/ck6/bstud/lincoln.html |access-date=6 September 2017}} he urged the president to abolish slavery on moral grounds. Owen also believed that emancipation would weaken the Confederate forces and help the Union army win the war. On 23 September 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary version of the Emancipation ProclamationPancoast and Lincoln, pages 87–89, and note 15, page 135. (as he had first resolved to do in mid-July{{cite web | url=http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/almintr.html | title=Emancipation Proclamation | publisher=Library of Congress and Knox College | work=Lincoln Papers | year=2002 | access-date=2013-06-28}}). In Emancipation is Peace, a pamphlet that Owen wrote in 1863, he confirmed his view that general emancipation was a means to end the war. In The Wrong of Slavery, the Right of Emancipation, and the Future of the African Race in the United States, a report that Owen wrote in 1864, he also suggested that the Union should provide assistance to freedmen.

Toward the end of his political career, Owen continued his effort to obtain federal voting rights for women. In 1865 he submitted an initial draft for a proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would not restrict voting rights to males. However, Article XIV, Section 2, in the final version of the Amendment, which became part of the U.S. Constitution in 1868, was modified to limit suffrage to males who were U.S. citizens over the age of twenty-one.{{cite web| title =The Constitution: Amendments 11–27 | date =4 November 2015 | publisher =National Archives and Records Administration | url = https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/amendments-11-27 | access-date =September 12, 2017}}

In The authenticity of the Bible (1833), Owen remarked :

For a century and a half, then, after Jesus' death, we have no means whatever of substantiating even the existence of the Gospels, as now bound up in the New Testament. There is a perfect blank of 140 years; and a most serious one it is.{{cite book|author=Origen Bacheler and Robert Dale Owen|title=Discussion on the Existence of God, and The Authenticity of the Bible|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RPUVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA247|year=1833|publisher=A.J. Matsell|page=247|quote=For a century and a half, then, after Jesus' death, we have no means whatever of substantiating even the existence of the Gospels, as now bound up in the New Testament. There is a perfect blank of 140 years; and a most serious one it is.}}

Like his father, Owen converted to Spiritualism and was the author of two books on the subject: Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1859) and The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next (1872).Pancoast and Lincoln, page 100.

Although he retired from active public service at the conclusion of his work as a member of the Freedman's commission on 15 May 1864, Owen continued his writing career.Pancoast and Lincoln, page 98–99. Major writing projects in retirement included Beyond the Breakers (1870), a novel;Pancoast and Lincoln, page 149. The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next (1871), one of his two books on spiritualism; and Threading My Way (1874), his autobiography.{{cite book | author=Robert Dale Owen |title=Threading My Way: Twenty-seven Years of Autobiography |publisher=G. W. Carleton and Company |year=1874|location=New York |url=https://archive.org/details/threadingmywayt01owengoog }} Owen also wrote several articles that were published in the Atlantic Monthly and Scribner's Monthly.Pancoast and Lincoln, pages 149–50.

In 1875 Owen suffered a mental breakdown that was severe enough for him to be hospitalized at the Indiana Hospital for the Insane in Indianapolis, where he underwent three months of treatment. Owen recovered from the illness, was released from the hospital, and resumed writing.Pancoast and Lincoln, pages 104–5. On 23 June 1876, a year before his death, Owen married Lottie Walton Kellogg at Caldwell, New York.

On 24 June 1877, Owen died at his summer home at Crosbyville on Lake George, New York. Initially he was buried in the town of Lake George in Warren County, New York. Later, his remains were exhumed and interred at New Harmony, Indiana, beside his first wife, Mary Jane Owen.

One of Owen's most significant legacies in Indiana was to secure the inclusion of an article in the Indiana Constitution of 1851 that provided tax-supported funding for a uniform system of free public schools and established the position of Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction. His early efforts to protect women's rights were another of his political legacies. Although he was unsuccessful in adding provisions to protect women's rights to Indiana's state constitution of 1851, his efforts paved the way for others to follow. Eventually, Indiana laws granted women's property and voting rights, as well as greater freedom in divorce.

As a U.S. Congressman, Owen introduced federal legislation that founded the Smithsonian Institution in 1846. He was also a member of the Smithsonian Institution's first Board of Regents and its Building Committee. His vision for the Smithsonian Institution Building, along with the preliminary plans and suggestions made by his brother, David Dale Owen, and architect Robert Mills, influenced architect James Renwick Jr.'s design for the Romanesque Revival-style building in Washington, D.C.

Owen's impact on the issues of slavery and emancipation is less direct. In a series of open letters he wrote in 1862 and in publications that followed, Owen encouraged the abolition of slavery on moral grounds, supported general emancipation, and suggested that the federal government should provide assistance to freedmen. Some historians have concluded that these open letters and Civil War-era pamphlets "helped immeasurably to solidify public opinion" in favor of emancipation.Pancoast and Lincoln, page 109.

The town of Dale, Indiana, was named in Owen's honor.{{cite book |author=Burford, William|title=Yearbook of the State of Indiana for the Year 1919|publisher=Legislative Bureau Division of Accounting and Statistics and The State Board of Accounts|location=Indiana |year= 1920}}

In 1911, the women of Indiana dedicated a memorial to Owen on the grounds of the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis that included a bronze bust of the statesman created by New Castle, Indiana native Frances Goodwin. The bust of Owen disappeared in the early 1970s; only its pedestal remains.{{cite book | author=Glory-June Greiff | title =Remembrance, Faith and Fancy: Outdoor Public Sculpture in Indiana | publisher =Indiana Historical Society Press | year =2005 | location =Indianapolis | page=165 | isbn =0-87195-180-0}} See also: {{cite web |publisher=Indiana Department of Administration |url=http://www.in.gov/idoa/files/WebPageSelfGuide6.pdf |title=The Indiana Statehouse: A Self-Guided Tour |access-date=27 October 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110614094418/http://www.in.gov/idoa/files/WebPageSelfGuide6.pdf |archive-date=2011-06-14}}

Owen's published works included pamphlets, speeches, tracts, books, and numerous articles for periodicals and newspapers.Pancoast and Lincoln, pages 145–50.

• An Outline of the System of Education at New Lanark (1824)
• Popular Tracts (1830)
• Moral Physiology; or, A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question (1830)Multiple editions of Moral Physiology were published in the United States and elsewhere. For a digital version, see: {{cite book | author=Owen, Robert Dale | title = Moral Physiology; or, A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question | publisher =J. Watson | year =1842 | location =London | url = https://archive.org/details/moralphysiology01owengoog | quote=Moral Physiology. }}
• Discussion on the Existence of God, and The Authenticity of the Bible (1833), co-written with Origen Bacheler
• Labor: Its History and its Prospects (1848), an address delivered at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1841; republished in 1851.{{cite journal| title =Labor: Its History and Its Prospects | journal =Electronic Texts in American History | date =February 1848 | publisher =Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln |url=http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/etas/9/| access-date =6 September 2017| last1 =Owen | first1 =Robert | last2 =Royster | first2 =Paul}}
• Hints on Public Architecture (1849){{cite book | author=David Dale Owen | title =Hints on Public Architecture; Containing, among other illustrations, views and plans of the Smithsonian Institution; Together with an Appendix Relative to Building Materials | publisher =George P. Putnam | year =1849 | location =New York | url =https://archive.org/details/hintsonpublicar00owengoog}} See also: Pancoast and Lincoln, page 147.
• Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1859)Pancoast and Lincoln, page 147.
• The Policy of Emancipation: In Three Letters (1863)Pancoast and Lincoln, page 148.
• Emancipation is Peace (1863)
• The Wrong of Slavery, the Right of Emancipation, and the Future of the African Race (1864)
• Beyond the Breakers. A Story of the Present Day. Village Life in the West (1870), a novel that was initially published serially in Lippincott's Magazine in 1869.
• The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next (1871)
• Threading My Way: Twenty-Seven Years of Autobiography (1874)
• "Touching Visitants from a Higher Life," published in The Atlantic Monthly, volume 35, number 207, January 1875, pages 57–69.{{cite web|title=Making of America|publisher=Cornell University Library|url=http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0035-12|access-date=5 September 2017}}

• Freedmen's town
• Josiah Warren
• Birth control movement in the United States

{{reflist|2}}

• {{cite book |author=Bacheler, Origen, and Robert Dale Owen |title=Discussion on the Existence of God, and The Authenticity of the Bible |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=RPUVAAAAYAAJ |year=1833 |publisher=A.J. Matsell}}
• {{cite journal| author=Brown, Allison, and Kisha Tandy | title =To Be Morally Just: Robert Dale Owen and Abolitionism | journal =Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History | volume =26 | issue =3 | pages =50–55 | publisher =Indiana Historical Society | location =Indianapolis | date =Summer 2014}}
• {{cite book |author=Burford, William |title=Yearbook of the State of Indiana for the Year 1919 |publisher=Legislative Bureau Division of Accounting and Statistics and The State Board of Accounts|location=Indiana |year= 1920}}
• {{cite journal| author=Estabrook, Arthur H. | title =The Family History of Robert Owen | journal =Indiana Magazine of History | volume =19 | issue =1 | pages =63–101 | publisher =Indiana University | location =Bloomington | date =1923| url =https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/view/6280/6276 | access-date =August 29, 2017}}
• {{Cite NIE|wstitle=Owen, Robert Dale|year=1905}}
• {{cite book | author=Greiff, Glory-June | title =Remembrance, Faith and Fancy: Outdoor Public Sculpture in Indiana | publisher =Indiana Historical Society Press | year =2005 | location =Indianapolis | isbn =0-87195-180-0}}
• {{cite book | author=Gugin, Linda C., and James E. St. Clair, eds. | title =Indiana's 200: The People Who Shaped the Hoosier State | publisher =Indiana Historical Society Press| year =2015 | location =Indianapolis | isbn =978-0-87195-387-2}}
• {{cite web |title=The Indiana Statehouse: A Self-Guided Tour |publisher=Indiana Department of Administration |url=http://www.in.gov/idoa/files/WebPageSelfGuide6.pdf |access-date=27 October 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110614094418/http://www.in.gov/idoa/files/WebPageSelfGuide6.pdf |archive-date=2011-06-14 }}
• {{cite book| title =Labor: Its History and Its Prospects | work =Electronic Texts in American History | date =February 1848 | publisher =Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln |url=http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/etas/9/ | access-date =September 6, 2017| last1 =Owen | first1 =Robert | last2 =Royster | first2 =Paul}}
• {{cite book|author=Leopold, Richard William|title=Robert Dale Owen: A Biography |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.58250|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=1940|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts| oclc=774894}}
• {{cite book|author=Lott, Eric |title=Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class| publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1993|location=New York|isbn=9780199717682}}
• {{cite web| title =Making of America | publisher =Cornell University Library |url=http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK2934-0035-12 | access-date =September 5, 2017}}
• {{cite web| title =Owen, Robert Dale (1801–1877) | work =Biographical Directory of the United States Congress | publisher =U.S. Congress | url =http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=O000152 | access-date =September 12, 2017}}
• {{cite book | author= Owen, Robert Dale | title =Threading My Way, Twenty-seven Years of Autobiography | publisher =G. W. Carleton and Company; Trubner and Company | year = 1874 | location =New York; London | url =https://archive.org/details/threadingmyway00unkngoog}}
• {{cite book | author=Pancoast, Elinor, and Anne E. Lincoln | title =The Incorrigible Idealist: Robert Dale Owen in America | publisher =Principia Press | year =1940 | location =Bloomington, Indiana | isbn =9780722204887 | oclc=2000563|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=U_o0AAAAIAAJ}}
• {{cite journal| author=Pitzer, Donald E. | title =Why New Harmony is World Famous| journal =Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History | volume =26 | issue =2 | pages=4–15| publisher =Indiana Historical Society | location =Indianapolis | date =Spring 2014}}
• {{cite book |title=The Smithsonian Castle and the Seneca Quarry|last=Peck |first=Garrett |year=2013 |publisher=The History Press}}
• {{cite book | author=Podmore, Frank | title =Robert Owen: A Biography | publisher =D. Appleton and Company | volume =I | year =1907 | location =New York | url =https://books.google.com/books?id=E-sJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PR18}}
• {{cite web| title =Robert Dale Owen | work =Department History | publisher =U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian |url=https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/owen-robert-dale | access-date =September 6, 2017}}
• {{cite web| title =Robert Dale Owen's Letter to President Lincoln | publisher =University of Evansville |url= http://faculty.evansville.edu/ck6/bstud/lincoln.html | access-date =September 6, 2017}}

• {{cite journal| author=Elliott, Josephine Mirabella | title = The Owen Family Papers | journal =Indiana Magazine of History | volume =60 | issue =4 | pages=331–52 | publisher =Indiana University | location =Bloomington | date = December 1964| url =https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/view/9072/11858| access-date =September 14, 2017}}
• Epps, Garrett. Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America. New York: Henry Holt, 2006.
• Joshua R. Greenberg, Advocating The Man: Masculinity, Organized Labor, and the Household in New York, 1800-1840 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 154–189.
• Himes, Norman E. "Robert Dale Owen, The Pioneer of American Neo-Malthusianism," American Journal of Sociology volume 35, number 4 (Jan. 1930), pages 529–547. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2765924 In JSTOR]
• Humphreys, Sexson E. "New Considerations on the Mission of Robert Dale Owen to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 1853-1858," Indiana Magazine of History, volume 46, number 1 (March 1950), pages 1–24. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/27787820 In JSTOR]
• Lindley, Harlow. "Robert Dale Owen and Indiana's Common School Fund," Indiana Magazine of History, volume 25, number 1 (March 1929), pages 52–60. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/27786372 In JSTOR]
• Pawa, Jay M. "Workingmen and Free Schools in the Nineteenth Century: A Comment on the Labor-Education Thesis," History of Education Quarterly, volume 11, number 3 (Autumn 1971), pages 287–302. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/367295 In JSTOR]
• Pessen, Edward. Most Uncommon Jacksonians: The Radical Leaders of the Early Labor Movement. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1967.
• Schlesinger Jr., Arthur M. The Age of Jackson. [1945] Boston: Little, Brown, 1953.
• Sears, Louis Martin. "Robert Dale Owen As A Mystic," Indiana Magazine of History, volume 24, number 1 (March 1928), pages 15–25. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/27786325 In JSTOR]
• Sears, Louis Martin. "Some Correspondence of Robert Dale Owen," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, volume 10, number 3 (Dec. 1923), pages 306–324. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1891604 In JSTOR]
• Winther, Oscar Osburn. "Letters from Robert Dale Owen to General Joseph Lane," Indiana Magazine of History, volume 36, number 2 (June 1940), pages 139–146. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/27787149 In JSTOR]

• {{commons-inline}}
• {{CongBio|O000152}}
• [http://faculty.evansville.edu/ck6/bstud/lincoln.html Transcript of Owen's letter to President Lincoln], University of Evansville, Indiana
• [https://archives.isl.lib.in.us/repositories/2/resources/223 Robert Dale Owen collection, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Indiana State Library]
• [http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/findingaids/archives/InU-Ar-VAA1364 Owen family collection, Indiana University Archives, Bloomington, Indiana]
• {{Librivox author |id=15107}}
• [https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchArg=Owen%2C+Robert+Dale&searchCode=GKEY%5E*&searchType=0&recCount=25 Robert Dale Owen] book titles at the Library of Congress
• {{Cite book |last=Owen |first=Robert Dale |url=http://archive.org/details/threadingmywayau0000owen |title=Threading my way : an autobiography |date=1967 |publisher=New York : A.M. Kelley |others=Internet Archive}}

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{{succession box | before= Edward Joy Morris | title= United States Ambassador (as Chargé d'Affaires and Minister Resident) to the Two Sicilies | years= 1853–1858 | after= Joseph Ripley Chandler}}

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{{US Ambassadors to Italy}}

{{IndianaUSRepresentatives}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Owen, Robert Dale}}

Category:1801 births

Category:1877 deaths

Category:19th-century American diplomats

Category:Activists from New York (state)

Category:Ambassadors of the United States to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

Category:American abolitionists

Category:American birth control activists

Category:American people of Welsh descent

Category:American social reformers

Category:American socialists

Category:American spiritual writers

Category:American spiritualists

Category:British emigrants to the United States

Category:American cooperative organizers

Category:Delegates to the 1851 Indiana constitutional convention

Category:Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Indiana

Category:Democratic Party members of the Indiana House of Representatives

Category:Owenites

Category:People from Lake George, New York

Category:People from New Harmony, Indiana

Category:People of the Reconstruction Era

Category:19th-century members of the United States House of Representatives

Category:19th-century members of the Indiana General Assembly